Year of Writing 138. Week 1.

5/18/12

As of 5 PM today, I officially ended my first week at my new job.  It's a pretty rad job.  I take care of two beautiful kids, I play, cook meals, and even though I have to do the cleanup, I can usually get some help along the way.  Here is a list of things I have learned and yet to figure out.

1.  Babies need to have a translator chip installed in them at birth to translate frequency and pitch of distress calls so I can distinguish between "I'm hungry,"  "I'm tired," and "I don't want your goddamn organic apple/peach/butternut squash/edamame bullshit. Give me a banana."

2.  Gummi Worms, Bubbles, Fruit roll-ups, and screen time are all great bribe material, but when you can convince your four year old to do something by LETTING HER HELP YOU CLEAN if she does - you have reached parenting Nirvana.  (yeah, that happened).

3.  There's nothing like a nice jaunt to Target at the end of the day with two screaming kids, amongst all the other screaming kids, just so you can pick up some baby food and toilet paper, then you get distracted by all the screaming kids, and end up buying a suitcase sized tylenol bottle and forgetting the toilet paper altogether, so you end up using a ripped up piece of a Trader Joe's bag that was in the bathroom for some reason to wipe your ass when you poop.  There's nothing like that in the world. 

4.  Let your daughter wear whatever she wants.  Unless you're going to high tea or something, it's not worth it anyway. Plus, when you walk into a store with your kid wearing rainboots, princess dress, witch hat, carrying a lightsaber and a purse shaped like a poodle, you kinda feel like a rock star.

5.  Stay at home dads are not quite accepted yet.  Old ladies always smile and say "you look like you got your hands full there!"  (seriously, I've been accosted by this phrase about seventy five thousand times now).  But younger mothers with their children still eye me with suspicion, as though I have ulterior motives as I stand there cleaning puke off my shoulder while trying to simultaneously bottle feed a baby and keep my daughter from running into the street without holding my hand.   What the hell?  Can't I just get a hello?

6.  When you have a regular job, there's always this wall you hit after lunch, right around two.  This is the time that tired and sleepy show up with their faded fedoras and billy clubs and knock you around for a little while.  Most jobs have breaks built in, so you can recharge a little bit.  When you stay at home, this is amplified by a gazillion, and while tired and sleepy are chewing on the butts of their cigars and beating the shit out of you, your kids are screaming because a) Finneas and Ferb wont come on the television and b) I have no idea.

7.  Imagination is a beautiful thing.  I will stop everything if a good imagination session is happening. Conversely, I will ignore a dumb imagination session - like "pretend you are Harry Potter and I'm Hermione and I'm chewing on an orange, but Harry thinks it's a piece of gum."  Yeah, no.

8.  It's been said a million times, but the box really is better than the toy.

9.  Human contact is supremely necessary.  I understand now that parent groups are really and truly for the parents.  Kids could care less.

10. Family is crucial.  I can't express how lucky I am to live so close to my mom, stepdad, sisters, brother, cousins and friends who are willing to come swoop up Isla and take her to feed their mom's turtle and play on the playground while I decompress in my hyperbolic chamber for a couple minutes.